People keen to visit Durga Puja pandals in Salt Lake and New Town can take guided bicycle tours organised by the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA).
An NKDA official said they decided to have such tours during Puja because cycling is popular in New Town and also to promote it as an activity.
The bicycle tours will have a guide and the cyclists will get dedicated parking bays in all top-draw pandals of New Town and Salt Lake.
The tour on each of the Puja days — from Panchami (October 10) to Dashami (October 15) — will start from the Kolkata Gate, opposite Rabindra Tirtha, around 8am. The participants won’t have to pay anything.
The official said the participants could bring their own bicycles or hire app-based bikes from any of the stands in New Town. “Anybody who is interested can register on the NKDA website or visit our office to do so. The participants will also get priority entry at all pandals they will be taken to,” said the official.
Another official said they had spoken to several Puja committees in Salt Lake and New Town, and they have agreed to provide special parking zones for the cyclists and organise priority entry lanes for them.
Debashis Sen, the chairman of NKDA, said they wanted to promote cycling as an environment-friendly means of transport and encourage the activity in every possible way.
“We have many residents in Salt Lake and New Town and both these townships have a vibrant cycling scene. We are confident that it will be quite an enjoyable experience,” said Sen, referring to the planned cycling tour of the pandals.
There are several big-ticket pandals in Salt Lake and New Town and the top draws include the ones in the AJ, FD and AE Blocks in Salt Lake and the Balaka Abasan and Greenwood Sonata pujas in New Town.
New Town has 20km of dedicated cycle lanes. Another 70km of cycle lanes have been proposed to be set up with all kinds of infrastructure like cycle stands. An app-based cycle sharing scheme, with 100 cycles, has been introduced in the township.